For better or worse, Battle For the Sun is further proof that when you're listening to Placebo album, you definitely know it's Placebo. That in and of itself is something of an accomplishment considering the turnover that preceded it: longtime drummer Stephen Hewitt (whose most notable contribution to the group was letting a drum machine fill in on "Pure Morning") was replaced by a twentysomething refugee from a California pop-punk group, the band signed with Vagrant, and the group hired nu-metal maven David Bottrill (Tool, Staind, Godsmack) to produce the record. As you could guess from all of that, Battle For the Sun is meant as a rejuvenation of the Placebo brand-- the sort of thing where they're gonna "get back to basics" and just crank out the no-frills rock action. In other words, they've jettisoned just about anything that ever made them perversely enjoyable.
It's a fight they just can't win-- even during their better days, Placebo's appeal lay entirely in a sense that Brian Molko's routine was somehow subversive, along with the occasional blast of industrial rhythms and abrasive guitar noise. Now it's all major keys and keyboard fills and "yes we can" attitude like they have the arms to box with the gods in Muse. At least at the outset, Molko allows somewhat newer ideas to infiltrate otherwise airtight strictures of his songcraft. Most of them give the hint that he owns a copy of Bloc Party's Silent Alarm: the hand-clappy breakdown on the unfortunately titled and composed "Kitty Litter", "Ashtray Heart" and its massed pub-chanting (and if you've gotten this far, you might know Ashtray Heart was the band's original name).
But whatever tweaks got thrown in are all at the mercy of Bottrill's iron fist, and damn if the first word that comes to mind is "merciless." Though he appears to be using at least three strings on his guitar this time out, Molko's instrument is as processed, smooth, and tasteless as a pimento loaf, along with strings and horn blasts that are so canned they might as well be orchestra hit presets. The Billy Corgan-style metaphysics of "The Never-Ending Why" feel like they exist solely to hammer home how little bands of Placebo's ilk have learned about the loudness wars since the horrifyingly recorded MACHINA.
But hell, I'm surprised as you are that I haven't brought up the lyrics yet. You probably know where this is going, but at least during Placebo's earlier work, Molko had something of a juvenile charm when he was beating Wavves to the weed/goth girls game by a decade. Somehow they've gotten worse. Though "For What It's Worth" has the record's fiercest hook, after what could pass for incidental "Tetris" music, the band stops midway for Molko to lament, "No one cares when you're out in the streets/ Picking up the pieces to make ends meet/ No one cares when you're out in the gutter/ Got no friends ain't got no lover," before having the nerve to repeat it for the rest of the song. Whether he's rehashing "Commercial For Levi"'s laughable attempt at PSA moralizing ("Julien") or leading dead-horse clichés to the glue factory ("Devil in the Details", "Breathe Underwater"), Molko's rhymes somehow manage to be completely predictable and yet somehow totally unbelievable: the watery guitar figures that open "Come Undone" suggest a possible Duran Duran cover, but instead it's Battle for the Sun's stab at resonance-- "You don't know how you're coming across/ Acting like you don't give a toss/ Walking around like you're on some kind of cross/ And it's a shame on you the irony's lost." Oh, word?
If the fact that I'm in my late twenties and still reviewing Placebo records doesn't make it totally obvious, I'll just come out and say it-- back in 1998, I thought Without You I'm Nothing was the absolute shit. Though it hit during the salad days of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", you could argue that the popularity of the Twilight series has made that album's combination of amateur sexual deviance and gender ambiguity somewhat timely. As such, Placebo seem to be sustaining their musical careers the same way Dazed and Confused's Wooderson sustained his social career: "That's what I love about these Placebo fans, man. I get older, they stay the same age."
